Monday, June 11, 2007

After the last post about making money, I tried out Auctioneer and Enchantrix. Talk about information overload! I quickly gave up on AH trading and instead respecced to Retribution (20/0/41).

Retribution is a lot of fun! Four digit crits are awesome. Probably not that amazing to any DPS readers, but as a paladin, it's funny to see. As well, Retribution is very gratifying on a visceral level. Your charcter does special attack animation, giant numbers pop up, your hands start glowing white, and there's sound effects. I was gleefully killing stuff all over Blade's Edge at first.

It is a lot more mana-intensive than I expected. I've always viewed Retribution as fairly mana-efficient, but it can be very mana-hungry. However, this is mostly judging Command. In fact, if you use Seal of Command (Rank 1) and don't judge, you can get 95% of the damage and greatly reduce your mana usage. I'm contemplating macroing SoC so I can left-click for Rank 1, and right-click for max rank.

I also totally understand the comments about threat now. I only went on one instance run as Retribution, but I had to be very careful about threat, even with one of our main Kara tanks tanking.

(It was a pretty weird run. Normal Shattered Halls with Prot Warrior, Feral Druid in bear, Retribution Paladin, Rogue, and Priest. We didn't really use crowd control but just tanked and killed everything. We probably outgear the instance at this point.)

I wasn't even doing that much damage. I was hovering at about 70% of the rogue's damage, though that was with tossing a few heals here and there. But I'd start attacking and then I hit a 2K Crusader Strike crit, 2K white damage crit, and 2K SoC crit--all at the same time--and the mob would be attacking me. Good thing I wear plate.

Between Retribution and selling off a lot of the enchanting materials and primals I had accumulated, I managed to increase my gold levels substantially. I'm still a long way off from the epic flying mount, but I'm in a much better position than before the weekend.

I'm not entirely sure if I'm going to stay Retribution. My healing is okay, but I'm missing Blessing of Kings. I would like to try out in a raid, just to see how things work. Quite honestly, for a 25-man raid, having at least one Retribution Paladin is probably a good idea. For a 10-man, though, I'm not really sure.

Posted by
Rohan

9 comments:

....are you stalking me? I may just be your Horde counterpart or something, but I have plans of transforming into a retribution paladin some time by the end of this month. I'm just trying to decide if I should hold out longer for some things (like the libram from Blood Furnace) or if I should dive right in. My guild is relatively cool with specs and do end-game stuff, so... I'll probably get to try ret in Karazhan relatively soon.

Quite honestly, for a 25-man raid, having at least one Retribution Paladin is probably a good idea.

I have been of this opinion for a long time. The combined value of having JoW, JoL, and a JotC with Improved SotC and Sanctified Crusader talents, combined with their damage potential (which may not be on par with a Fury Warrior or a Rogue, but certainly isn't weak) would more than balance out the lack of another DPS class.

I’m not so sure about Ret being a viable end game spec. At the end of the day usefulness is more about player ability than Toon configuration but outside of an extra blessing I don’t really think 3% critical strike to the raid really makes up for the damage delta between a rogue and a Ret Paladin.

In our 25 mans we let all the rogues and the DPS Paladin role to be in the Melee group and have still seen the losing rogue out dps the group buffed DPS Paladin. The tree is still broken in my eyes it’s too burst damage centric which doesn’t bide well in PvE.

I will admit that our most regular Ret Paladin istoo DPS focused and his use as a Healer or Off-tank suffers from lack of experience/gear so his worth is devalued in my eyes.

1) You WILL pull aggro and die in a 25 man, especially if things like windfury totems, trueshot, battleshout etc are applied.

Paladins, like fury warriors, have no aggro dump (Other than dying), and bubble does not count, as it continues to record your threat while you are in it. So eventually, unless you throttle your DPS, you're in melee range (less threat margin of error), you're going to pull, splat, and die.

This would be why rogues (and feral druids to a very lesser extent) are able to put out the big dps numbers, due to feint and cower.

2) Your gear REALLY matters.

Sure, it looks like you're doing damage, because as a paladin, you're not used to doing it. Unfortunately, you're not really putting out big numbers consistantly unless you have the gear for it, which is 5/5 gladiator gear and your pvp gear for the most part. (Because just decking yourself in warrior gear is a terrible option for a ret pally, especially being so mana inefficient and low int build)

Ret pallies are fine, if you want to pvp with them, it's a versatile build. In 10 mans, 25 mans, and otherwise.. you're better off in another role.

If you want to make the money, prot aoe grinding is the way to go... just grab a http://www.thottbot.com/i25828with a shield spike and run sh until you get a http://www.thottbot.com/i27529. Then go nuts on the supplicants in shadowmoon, I pull around 24 at a time and avg 300g an hour

Nihilum, and the top raid guild on my server (Phase Two), both run ret paladins in their 25 mans. They scale as a damage class very well with gear, and bring excellent group benefits. If you're willing to commit yourself to it, you definetely should.

Prot AoE spec is decent too for soloing. Sure, you will kill slower, but you can be certain of killing them, and you can also be sure of surviving if another enemy, or two, or three show up :p What I give up in DPS is made up for in knowing that I can survive almost anything in any given zone.

look up the spec elsewhere, should be able to find it easily on the official paladin forums.

But basically, you're judging/sealing light and getting hp back that way, and doing damage with retribution aura, shield spike, and other things. Additional gear/enchants that give chance to give health back per hit is decent as well. You'll want a (preferably) fast 1h weapon and a shield. Right now I'm running with my ret gear but I hope to get my gear more spell damagey.